Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/80

 this vast central region, described by Pritchard more or less minutely, variously advanced in the arts of life, and exhibiting various degrees of enterprise and energy.

Passing along the western shore southward, we next come to the coast of Guinea, where we find the Negro in his worst state of degradation. Hither comes the slave-trader for his wretched cargo, and hence have been exported the victims of that horrible commerce, which supplied the slave-marts of the western world. The demonizing influence of this traffic on the character of the natives defies all description.

In the mountains and ravines of this portion of Africa lurk gangs of robbers, ever on the watch to seize the wives and children of the neighboring clans and sell them to the traders. Every corner of the land has been the scene of rapine and blood. Parents sell their children, and children sell their parents. Such are the passions stimulated by Christian gold, and such the state of society produced by contact with Christian nations. These people, degraded and unhumanized by the slaver, are the progenitors of the black population of the Southern States of the American Union.

Still we are to observe, that though the lowest type of Negro character is to be found on the Guinea coast and the adjacent region, it is not uniformly degraded. Tribes are to be found, considerably advanced in civilization, whose features and characters resemble those of the central region which we have just described.

Passing southward still farther, and crossing the line, we come into southern Africa. This whole region from the equator to the Cape, with the exception of the Hottentots, is, so far as discovered, occupied by